Jeremy Goodrich's Blog

My father in law lent me a book called "the road less traveled", which was a best selling psychology, self help kind of book from...well seemingly a while ago, judging by the yellowed, faded condition of the pages. However the book is fascinating. One of the first things I read prompted me to revisit my thinking on a few things...and, I realized: we've been pretty ambigious on any number of things.

For example consider this list:
1) Photo sharing, tagging, rating, syndicating, photo widgets, slide shows, varied permissions, comments, alerts, relatedness, popularity.
2) Question rating, asking, suggesting, answering, reporting, alerting.
3) Friend adding, commenting, private messaging, instant messaging, chatting, emailing, video chatting, role defining, presence building.

Wow...how many facets are there to just a few of the services on FunAdvice, the primary product I'm involved with? Too many, it turns out. I also realized we're so far away from where we need to be, on just this one list...we can't finish. Not this quarter and perhaps, not the one after that.

What's this have to do with strategy? Well, our strategy with FunAdvice was never, "do a billion little features, all in a half assed fashion and hope that repeat usage of those features never revealed their half-assed-ness." Oddly enough, people noticed. I noticed ...and, I did nothing. I kept trying to get the uber list done, the massive, we're falling behind the curve list that encompasses a fast moving space (social networking) and tried my level best to ensure that our feature set kept moving towards...well I can't say completion simply because, the run rate is such that we'll never get there.

Thus a new strategy is needed and the good news is, we have it in mind. Given one thing... a powerful, simple and clear statement about what we're going to do with the product. If it works, then this strategy lays the foundation for the rest of the list...as it results in increased revenue, which justifies things like extra head count, more resources, bandwidth and more things coming down the pipeline.

To recap: if you find yourself bogged down by a billion little things that all have to be done...step back. Take a deep breath. Analyze what you are doing, make a list of you have to. Then make a decision...and a prediction. If you agree to stay the course for where you are already headed, given the processes you have in place, where will you end up? Likewise, if you decide on a new course, given your resources and level of throughput, where will you end up? Which is the better place?

I love business because, fundamentally, we keep score by making money. A business is an entity that derives profit, no? In any case...I'm excited. The new strategy is clear. It's concise. It has within it the notion of "we will win because of XYZ". Competing on a half assed feature list with facebook won't enable us to win (or competing with myspace, for the same). However, if we change the positioning of our business to match the market in which we find ourselves...and, provide the reason for the usage of the product...we'll get there.

If your strategy is out of whack, feel free to drop me a note. The only kind of consulting I charge for is our core business...other advice (including smart remarks) are available at no cost.